Allergic reactions to semen are, unfortunately, very real.
In an <a href="https://theconversation.com/semen-allergies-may-be-surprisingly-common-heres-what-you-need-to-know-259308">essay for The Conversation</a>, reproductive science specialist Michael Carroll of the UK's Manchester Metropolitan University explained that allergic reactions to seminal fluid can manifest as a nasty response to a partner's ejaculate, or even your own.
The most common semen allergy is what's known as "seminal plasma hypersensitivity" or SPH, in which women who have sex with men react to proteins in seminal plasma, the goopy stuff that makes up spunk. In other words, it's the seminal fluid that's to blame, not the sperm itself — but the symptoms are very real, ranging from irritating vulvar itching and painful vaginal burning to anaphylactic shock.
Bottom line? A lot of people might be suffering from this and not even know it. If you might be, doctors recommend either using condoms, taking antihistamines before sex, taking anti-inflammatory medications after sex, or desensitization therapy involving exposure of diluted semen to the skin.
"If sex routinely leaves you itchy, sore or unwell — and condoms help — you might be allergic to semen," Carroll wrote.
First documented nearly 60 years ago when a woman had to be hospitalized for her "<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1409127/">violent allergic reaction</a>" to sex, SPH is still, the reproductive expert wrote, often underdiagnosed. Until the year 1997, the medical establishment thought that fewer than 100 women had ever experienced the allergy, but a seminal — sorry — study that year found that nearly 12 percent of postcoital illnesses <a href="https://theconversation.com/semen-allergies-may-be-surprisingly-common-heres-what-you-need-to-know-259308">could be attributed to SPH</a>. (Regrettably, there does not appear to be any formal inquiry whether men who have sex with men can have SPH, though there does appear to be <a href="https://www.metromaleclinic.com/sperm-allergy-can-any-woman-or-man-be-allergic-to-semen/">anecdotal evidence that it does</a>.)
About 15 years later, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2339588/Up-12-women-allergic-semen-claims-leading-expert--wrongly-blaming-symptoms-STDs.html">Carroll conducted an informal survey</a> that found the same rate of probable SPH, though he found that the cases had often gone misdiagnosed as sexually transmitted illnesses, yeast infections, or even run-of-the-mill "sensitivity." Given that its symptoms mirror some of those illnesses, it's not hard to see why.
Along with being allergic to one's partner's semen, a separate condition known post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS) affects men who are allergic to their own skeet. With only <a href="https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240317/Rare-condition-post-orgasmic-illness-syndrome-explored-in-depth.aspx">465 documented cases</a> as of 2024, POIS can cause flu-like symptoms like fatigue and muscle aches immediately after ejaculation — and <a href="https://www.smsna.org/patients/news/what-is-postorgasmic-illness-syndrome">doctors are stumped</a> as to its cause. Like SPH, both antihistamines and desensitization are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214442022002017">recommended for POIS</a>, as is hormonal therapy.
Speaking about SPH specifically, Carroll noted that more often than not, "sex-related symptoms often go unspoken."
"Embarrassment, stigma, and a lack of awareness among doctors mean that many women suffer in silence," the reproductive scientist said.
More on weird sex stuff: <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-relationship-emotional-cheating">Hanky Panky With Naughty AI Still Counts as Cheating, Therapist Says</a>

Gravy Train

"Embarrassment, stigma, and a lack of awareness among doctors mean that many women suffer in silence."

Not Tonight, Honey... I'm Allergic to Your Spunk

Though most signs are telling us artificial intelligence isn't taking anyone's jobs, employers are still using the tech to <a href="https://futurism.com/ceos-ai-job-market">justify layoffs</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/startup-investors-gig-jobs-ai">outsource work to the global South</a>, and <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-ai-scare-labor">scare workers into submission</a>. But that's not all — a growing number of employers are using AI not just as an excuse to downsize, but are giving it the final say in who gets axed.
That's according to a <a href="https://www.resumebuilder.com/half-of-managers-use-ai-to-determine-who-gets-promoted-and-fired/">survey of 1,342 managers</a> by ResumeBuilder.com, which runs a blog dedicated to HR. Of those surveyed, 6 out of 10 admitted to consulting a large language model (LLM) when deciding on major HR decisions affecting their employees.
Per the report, 78 percent said they consulted a chatbot to decide whether to award an employee a raise, while 77 percent said they used it to determine promotions.
And a staggering 66 percent said an LLM like ChatGPT helped them make decisions on layoffs; 64 percent said they'd turned to AI for advice on terminations.
To make things more unhinged, the survey recorded that nearly 1 in 5 managers frequently let their LLM have the final say on decisions — without human input.
Over half the managers in the survey used ChatGPT, with Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini coming in second and third, respectively.
The numbers paint a grim picture, especially when you consider the LLM sycophancy problem — an issue where LLMs generate flattering responses that reinforce their user's predispositions. OpenAI's ChatGPT is <a href="https://futurism.com/sycophancy-chatbots-ai-problem">notorious</a> for its brown nosing, so much so that it was forced to <a href="https://futurism.com/altman-chatgpt-personality-annoying">address the problem</a> with a special update.
Sycophancy is an especially glaring issue if ChatGPT alone is making the decision that could upend someone's livelihood. Consider the scenario where a manager is seeking an excuse to fire an employee, allowing an LLM to confirm their prior notions and effectively pass the buck onto the chatbot.
AI brownnosing is already having some devastating social consequences. For example, some people who have <a href="https://futurism.com/gen-z-thinks-conscious-ai">become convinced</a> that LLMs are truly sentient — which might have something to do with the "artificial intelligence" branding — have developed what's being called "<a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">ChatGPT psychosis</a>."
Folks consumed by ChatGPT have experienced <a href="https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises">severe mental health crises</a>, characterized by delusional breaks from reality. Though ChatGPT's only been on the market for a little under three years, it's already being blamed for causing divorces, job loss, homelessness, and in some cases, <a href="https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis">involuntary commitment in psychiatric care facilities</a>.
And that's all without mentioning LLMs' knack for <a href="https://futurism.com/cdc-report-vaccines-hallucinated-study">hallucinations</a> — a not-so-minor problem where the chatbots spit out made-up gibberish in order to provide an answer, even if it's totally wrong. As LLM chatbots consume more data, they also become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt-google.html">more prone</a> to these hallucinations, meaning the issue is likely only going to get worse as time goes on.
When it comes to potentially life-altering choices like who to fire and who to promote, you'd be better off rolling a dice — and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02366-2">unlike LLMs</a>, at least you'll know the odds.
More on LLMs: <a href="https://futurism.com/openai-admits-gpt45-hallucinates">OpenAI Admits That Its New Model Still Hallucinates More Than a Third of the Time</a>

Bossy

Don't do that. Please.

Bosses Are Using AI to Decide Who to Fire

Elon Musk's fanboys are furious at the billionaire for giving them bad betting advice on Polymarket.
Back when there was still a slight chance that Tesla might pull off a public Robotaxi launch by the end of June, the multi-hyphenate billionaire <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935819020718190735">prognosticated on X-formerly-Twitter </a>that <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-bros-bet-on-tesla-screwed">betting against the haters</a> on the <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/will-tesla-launch-a-driverless-robtotaxi-service-before-july">crypto-based prediction platform</a> would be a "money-making opportunity."
Obviously, <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-week-disaster">that didn't happen</a> — the program remains glitchy and not open to the public — and now that the bet has closed, the jilted Tesla bros who drank the Kool-Aid are experiencing stages of grief from <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-bros-begging-polymarket">bargaining</a> to anger as they face down the financial burn of their own bad decisions.
"I'm literally going to try and sue Elon," one of the peeved pikers quipped. "The guy held all the [cards] on whether this bet resolved to yes or no."
"Elon f*cked us," another raged. "I have no clue what that guy is thinking but this will harm his reputation. He had the ability to fulfill the requirements."
A few days before the end of June, another foolish bettor appeared to be in the bargaining stage of grief as they implored Musk to change the odds by posting — falsely — that a public Robotaxi launch had been achieved.
"Elon I will put all my earnings into Tesla if you just f*cking tweet something," they commented. "You love to tweet."
Others still seem to be in the denial stage, even now that the bet has closed.
"Why on earth would Elon lie like this?" wrote one, who <a href="https://futurism.com/video-elon-musk-tesla-launch-not-full-self-driving">apparently is unaware</a> of <a href="https://futurism.com/video-elon-musk-promising-self-driving-cars">Musk's long history</a> of bibs about <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-admits-fsd-hardware">full self-driving</a> (FSD) and <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-openai-web-lies">many</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-executives-grilled-elon">other</a> <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-lawyers-computer">things</a>. "Thats actually shocking."
Perhaps the most depressing of the responses comes from someone who seems to genuinely believe that the <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-pollution-permit">edgelord billionaire actually suffers consequences</a> when he's in the wrong.
"Elon needs to step in and clarify the situation," the commenter wrote. "His reputation is at stake."
While not directed at the Tesla CEO himself, one of the comments chiding the yes-voting fanboys succinctly describes how it feels to look at this embarrassingly ignorant exchange from outside the Musk club.
"Go buy a lottery ticket at 7-Eleven instead of wasting everyone’s time," the responder wrote. "This shouldn’t even be up for debate."
More on Robotaxi: <a href="https://futurism.com/robotaxi-fails-elon-musk-decision">Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing Because Elon Musk Made a Foolish Decision Years Ago</a>

Bad Bet

"I'm literally going to try and sue Elon."

Tesla Fans Rage Against Elon Musk as They Lose Money on Polymarket After Doing Exactly What He Told Them to Do

Two Bitcoin wallets that remained untouched for more than a decade just sprang back to life — and whoever owns them is now filthy rich in crypto.
As <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sleeping-beauty-bitcoin-wallets-wake-up-after-14-years-to-the-tune-of-2-billion-79f1f11f">MarketWatch reports</a>, each Bitcoin was worth just 78 cents back when the unknown buyer purchased 20,000 tokens in 2011 for just under $16,000.
Due to the digital currency's inexorable rise over the subsequent years, the extremely patient owner of the two "Sleeping Beauty" wallets where the Bitcoin was stored now holds more than $2 billion worth — a roughly 13 million percent increase in value that's enough to make even the most bearish-on-crypto financier's eyes water.
Although the mysterious now-billionaire shifted the crypto from one wallet to another after more than fourteen years of silence, it's unclear what they intend to do with it.
But it's possible that longtime holders are getting tempted by cold hard fiat currency. Earlier this year, the blockchain analysis firm <a href="https://cryptoquant.com/insights/quicktake/6808b8a41babdc65a66b1fe9-Dormant-Bitcoin-Awakens-Old-BTC-Moves-Surge-in-2025">Onchain School found</a> that some 62,000 Bitcoins that had been mined at least seven years prior were moved between wallets in the first three months of 2025.
"The uptick may signal a shift in sentiment among long-term holders," the analysts explained on the CryptoQuant platform, "potentially driven by macroeconomic shifts, price expectations, or institutional liquidity needs."
But if all that Sleeping Beauty crypto does continue to go unspent, it'd be the ultimate testament to the "<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hodl.asp">Hold On for Dear Life</a>" or HODLer philosophy, an old-school crypto refrain in which buyers let their caches mature and avoid succumbing to the pressures of short-term booms and busts.
Back in <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/explained/hodling-in-2025-the-most-widely-used-bitcoin-strategy-explained">crypto's fledgling years</a>, the HODL strategy was popular among early miners who correctly predicted that their wallets would one day be worth a fortune. While that kind of conviction has been seen in plenty of other <a href="https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20250620200/how-gold-fatigue-has-helped-drive-platinum-prices-up-44-this-year">investment vehicles</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/tulip-mania-the-classic-story-of-a-dutch-financial-bubble-is-mostly-wrong-91413">throughout history</a>, it's still pretty impressive to see with such a hefty Bitcoin stash — and as one crypto CEO noted, it would have taken a lot of willpower to achieve.
"What is remarkable is the amount of self-control that it would have taken through all these market cycles to sit on it for that long," enthused Caroline Bowler, the CEO of the Australia-based trading platform BTC Markets, in an interview with MarketWatch.
As Bowler pointed out, the owner of those newly-active wallets could "absolutely... move the market" if they decided to sell. Assuming the holder is a rational actor, though, it's unlikely they'd unload it all at once.
"It seems very unlikely that someone would dump 10,000 onto the market in one trade," she said, "or in equivalents cross the week."
More on Bitcoin: <a href="https://futurism.com/crypto-king-kentucky-italian-bitcoin-kidnapping">The "Crypto King of Kentucky" Allegedly Kidnapped and Tortured a Man For Weeks in NYC Over His Bitcoin Stash</a>

Big Beautiful Bitcoin

What are you buying with this type of money?

Bitcoin Bought in 2011 Suddenly Springs to Life After 13 Million Percent Increase In Value

Microsoft has <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-to-lay-off-as-many-as-9000-employees-in-latest-round/">laid off about 9,000</a> workers in the midst of a newly-announced $80 billion AI investment — and apparently, those who just lost their jobs should be talking to ChatGPT about it.
As <a href="https://aftermath.site/xbox-microsoft-layoffs-ai-prompt-chatgpt-matt">Aftermath reports,</a> an executive producer at Microsoft-owned Xbox ended up with egg on his face after suggesting that laid off workers pour their hearts out to AI.
"These are really challenging times, and if you’re navigating a layoff or even quietly preparing for one, you’re not alone and you don’t have to go it alone," that producer, Matt Turnbull, said in a since-deleted LinkedIn post that Aftermath thankfully screenshotted for posterity. "No AI tool is a replacement for your voice or your lived experience. But at a time when mental energy is scarce, these tools can help get you unstuck faster, calmer, and with more clarity."
"I know these types of tools engender strong feelings in people, but l'd be remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances," he continued. "I've been experimenting with ways to use [large language model] Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss."
Yes, you read that right: a Microsoft boss was telling those just laid off by the tech giant that they should use chatbots — run or funded by the company that just fired them — to avoid crying on a company shoulder.
Following that phoned-in introduction, Turnbull offered a few potential prompts for AI as a job loss grief counselor, including those that help with career planning, resume-building, networking, and, our personal favorite, "emotional clarity [and] confidence."
"I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off," Turnbull's "clarity" prompt reads. "Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?"
It comes as little surprise, given how absolutely tone-deaf those suggestions are, that folks on social media had quite a lot to say to the Xbox executive.
"The new Severance season is insanely good," <a href="https://x.com/Ysqander/status/1941117997722263903">joked one commentator</a> on X-formerly-Twitter.
As another irked observer <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1lrh90f/comment/n1an0xu/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">wrote on the r/gaming subreddit</a>, "anyone that tells people who were fired to talk to a computer chat algorithm for therapy is insane."
Indeed, gamers seem to be the most affronted by Turnbull's attempt at sensitivity and advice, with <a href="https://x.com/RazorBladeMango/status/1941183591775601033">another X commentator remarking</a> that his response to those layoffs was one of "the most tone-deaf and cruelest things" they'd ever seen.
"I hope this finally shatters the illusion for some people that Xbox is not your good buddy," that same user quipped.
Though it's hard to say whether the Xbox producer's sentiments were sincere or not, it's clear from the subsequent deletion of the post that he was made to feel some type of way about it after putting it out into the world — and honestly, that potential embarrassment is the most we can hope for with these sorts of tech bros.
More on AI: <a href="https://futurism.com/journalists-roast-sam-altman">Journalists Just Roasted Sam Altman To His Face</a>

Read The Room

"l'd be remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances."

After 9,000 Layoffs, Microsoft Boss Has Brutal Advice for Sacked Workers

Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to get human workers to fix the technology's screwups.
As the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o">BBC reports,</a> there's now something of a cottage industry for writers and coders who specialize in fixing AI's mistakes — and those who are good at it are using the opportunity to rake in cash.
Sarah Skidd, an American product marketing manager, told the British broadcaster that she's not concerned about being replaced by the technology because, as her recent work experiences have taught her, she's often tasked with cleaning up its many mistakes.
Earlier this year, Skidd was approached by an agency that urgently needed someone to redo copy for a client after having an undisclosed AI chatbot do the work to save a few bucks. The writing was typical of AI, she noted, calling it "very basic" and uninteresting.
"It was supposed to sell and intrigue," Skidd told the BBC, "but instead, it was very vanilla."
When the marketing maestro got down to business, she realized it was going to require a complete overhaul. Ultimately, she spent 20 hours redoing the copy from scratch — and with her $100-per-hour rate, that meant her client was shelling out $2,000 for copy that likely would have ended up being far cheaper had a human just written it in the first place.
With <a href="https://futurism.com/companies-replaced-workers-ai">more and more companies</a> rushing to <a href="https://futurism.com/klarna-openai-humans-ai-back">replace the workers</a> they fired during the pivot-to-AI craze over the past few years, things are shaking out in unexpected ways.
According to Sophie Warner, the co-owner of the UK-based digital marketing agency Create Designs, she's been fielding more and more requests from clients to clean up after AI mistakes.
"Before clients would message us if they were having issues with their site or wanted to introduce new functionality," Warner told the BBC. "Now they are going to ChatGPT first."
In one recent case, a client ended up going without a website for three days and having to pay Create Designs nearly $500 over a small line of code that ChatGPT had written for them. The original update would, Warner said, have taken about 15 minutes to implement manually.
"We often have to charge an investigation fee to find out what has gone wrong, as they don't want to admit it," she told the broadcaster, "and the process of correcting these mistakes takes much longer than if professionals had been consulted from the beginning."
Given that they're now profiting off the technology's mistakes, neither woman is particularly concerned about or even against AI — but they are frustrated that people think it can replace expert work.
"While it seems like a quick and inexpensive option, AI rarely takes into account unique brand identity, target demographics, or conversion-focused design," Warner said. "It simply cannot replace the value of human expertise and context in our industry."
Skidd, meanwhile, is confident about her job security in the age of AI.
"Maybe I'm being naive," the American marketer said, "but I think if you are very good, you won't have trouble."
More on AI fails: <a href="https://futurism.com/time-workers-save-ai-jobs">You'll Spit Take When You Hear How Little Time Workers Are Saving With AI, According to This Huge New Study</a>

Reverse Automation

Oopsie.

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

YouTuber and Elon Musk stan Ellie Sheriff had a bizarre experience during her first Tesla robotaxi ride in Austin, Texas.
As seen in a <a href="https://youtu.be/edEpCjk6Skw">video</a> she shared on her channel, "Ellie in Space," over the weekend, Sheriff got a strange call from the EV maker mid-ride, asking her and her fellow passenger to literally leave the vehicle due to incoming weather.
"So we had to get out of the robotaxi, because weather is coming in," Sheriff said in the video while standing in the middle of a windy field.
Their ride had to be fully canceled, leaving them stranded. Worse yet, the app claimed there was "high service demand." However, moments later, they were able to hail another robotaxi to get them back to the place where they started.
"I don't want to just be a Tesla rah-rah cheerleader," Sheriff said. "It is very cool. However, this is a limitation currently, how it is. You shouldn't have to terminate the service cuz it's about to rain."
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Tesla Called Me During my First Robotaxi Ride..." width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/edEpCjk6Skw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The head-scratching incident highlights some glaring shortcomings of Tesla's long-awaited autonomous ride-hailing service. The company's launch of an extremely scaled-down service that features human safety drivers in the passenger's seat has already led to plenty of chaos, including <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-jerks-wheel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">violently jerking steering wheels</a>, unexpected <a href="https://gizmodo.com/videos-show-tesla-robotaxis-swerving-hard-braking-for-cops-in-first-day-of-austin-launch-2000619035" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">braking around cop cars</a>, and a <a href="https://youtu.be/C_pSZv6THfA?si=13hvrVR1JsM90h5J&amp;t=2276" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">dangerous drop-off</a> in the middle of a four-way intersection.
It's unclear why exactly Sheriff's ride was cut short beyond some wind and rain. However, considering Musk's carmaker has <a href="https://futurism.com/robotaxi-fails-elon-musk-decision">long ditched light detection and ranging sensors</a> known as lidar in favor of relying exclusively on cameras for its driver assistance features, it seems probable that Tesla is nervous about having the robotaxi drive in bad conditions.
Case in point, earlier this year, YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober <a href="https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ">published a damning video</a>, demonstrating that Tesla's erroneously-named "Full Self-Driving" software can be <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-wall-autopilot">easily fooled by rain</a>, bright lights, and even a fake, Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road behind it.
The stakes are extremely high for the EV maker as Musk has bet the company's fate on the tech. In light of <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-crumbles-sales">cratering car sales</a>, the CEO has gone all in on automation. Earlier this week, the company <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-dismal-sales-news-robotaxi-launch">revealed</a> it had delivered just 384,000 vehicles between April and June, compared to 444,000 over the same period last year, the <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-price-deliveries-sales-musk-99a554a7">biggest drop</a> in the company's history.
More on Tesla robotaxis: <a href="https://futurism.com/tesla-robotaxi-jerks-wheel">Tesla Robotaxi Terrifyingly Jerks Wheel Back and Forth While Carrying Passenger</a>

Rain Check

What the...

Tesla Robotaxi Rider Gets Bizarre Call Saying She Has to Exit Vehicle Immediately

Billionaire tech moguls aren't the only ones doomsaying about artificial intelligence layoffs. CEOs across a range of industries are now jumping on the bandwagon, saying it's no longer a matter of "if," but "how many" jobs AI will take.
A recent <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259">survey by the </a><a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-white-collar-job-loss-b9856259">Wall Street Journal</a> explored just how pervasive the automation idea is throughout a number of industries, and execs aren't pulling any punches.
For example, CEO of Ford Motor Company Jim Farley recently predicted that AI "is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US." He added that "AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind."
In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy spooked his employees with a memo saying to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/amazon-ceo-says-ai-will-lead-to-job-cuts-5401ab17?mod=article_inline">expect layoffs</a> in the next few years because of the "once-in-a-lifetime" revolution of AI.
And at JPMorgan Chase, CEO Marianne Lake recently told investors to expect the company's overall head count — and therefore its payroll expenses — to fall by as much as 10 percent over the next few years, thanks to the magic of AI.
If the AI automation dystopia really is upon us, it evidently slipped under the radar of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which recently released its <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">latest jobs report</a>. Among other things, it found that the US added 147,000 jobs in June, slightly dropping the unemployment rate from 4.2 percent to 4.1 — and seemingly refuting the claim of an impending AI takeover, at least for now.
Over half of these jobs, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/june-2025-jobs-report-what-to-know-unemployment-rate-economy-right-now-rcna216599">NBC notes</a>, were in state and local government roles, while healthcare, social, service, and construction work made up the bulk of other gains.
Still, there are some major issues buried in the data, like the fact that <a href="https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#longterm">long-term unemployment</a> — people unemployed for six months or more — has skyrocketed from 190,000 to a whopping 1.6 million. Meanwhile, the number of people unemployed at the median length of unemployment, 15 weeks or more, jumped from 34.9 percent to 38.3 percent. That level hasn't been seen since the throes of the pandemic, NBC notes.
While those numbers are bad news — like, <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-and-unemployment/">really bad</a> — the crisis they point to is a little more complicated than an AI-powered dystopia. At their core, these numbers are arguably the result of our economy's <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269599332_The_Reserve_Army_of_Labor_in_the_Postwar_U_S_Economy">dependence on unemployment</a> laundered through AI hype.
As economic researchers Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith observed in a <a href="https://mindmatters.ai/2025/07/the-job-market-is-telling-us-something-about-ai-and-jobs/">recent column</a>, revenue from large language model (LLM) adoption is falling <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-ai-bubble-is-looking-worse-than-the-dot-com-bubble-heres-why-f688e11d">far short</a> of the tech industry's promises. What gets presented as proof of AI's automation potential is instead a mash of <a href="https://futurism.com/ceo-ai-scare-labor">penny-pinching layoffs</a>, <a href="https://futurism.com/startup-investors-gig-jobs-ai">outsourcing</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/computer-science-majors-job-market-7ad443bf?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjg57MU31YENkPdNGxweKu8yYToE5EURA5LdC6eeYycvY7aW5eEeOJw&amp;gaa_ts=686444d1&amp;gaa_sig=MpyA3u2QrzSLJ6Og2t5w9nR1UtrnEfjUshBU77WHdU33J2XD7WlnyR6Nj0pvxWA9tSpLBIBCtt71qj0dsJg_Gw%3D%3D">labor market saturation</a>, and in some cases, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/companies-avoid-hiring-gen-z-workplace-1884613#:~:text=While%2041%20percent%20of%20hiring,be%20successful%20in%20the%20workplace.">employer bias</a> against recent college grads.
With that view in mind, all the CEO bluster looks less like an imminent crisis brought on by AI, and more like business as usual in a <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-and-unemployment/">market economy</a>. What workers do about that whole situation is another story altogether.
More on Automation: <a href="https://futurism.com/professors-company-ai-agents">Professors Staffed a Fake Company Entirely With AI Agents, and You'll Never Guess What Happened</a>

Serf Plus

You gotta believe them.

CEOs Say AI Is Poised to Wipe Out an Astonishing Number of Jobs

In the city that built the blues, Elon Musk's xAI data center has been given permission to keep polluting the air with fumes from burning methane gas — which it had already been doing so <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/elon-musk-xai-memphis">without authorization</a> for a year.
As <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/xai-data-center-air-pollution-permit/">Wired reports</a>, Memphis' local health department has granted an air permit for the xAI data center, allowing it to keep operating the methane gas turbines that power Musk's Grok chatbot and Colossus, the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-most-powerful-ai-supercomputer">gigantic supercomputer</a> at its heart.
In Boxtown, the historically Black neighborhood in South Memphis where xAI's data center is situated, Musk's unfettered pollution has ripped the band-aid off a wound that had barely begun to heal. As <a href="https://capitalbnews.org/we-deserve-to-breathe-clean-air-memphis-residents-take-on-elon-musks-xai/">Capital B News reported</a> earlier this year, the neighborhood was once home to the Allen Fossil Plant, an electrical facility that left pits of noxious coal ash and a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/19/tennessee-valley-authority-memphis-coal/">lengthy legacy of environmental racism</a> behind when it was forced to close in 2018.
In the year since the data center opened and Colossus went online, the smog from Musk's gas turbines has been veritably choking out local residents in a district already struggling with heightened asthma rates due to its proximity to industrial pollution.
"I can't breathe at home," Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582">told Politico</a> earlier this year. "It smells like gas outside."
Given that context, local activists are furious that xAI was granted a permit at all — especially because it appears to violate the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-air-act">Clean Air Act</a>, a landmark  federal law that regulates the kind of emissions that the xAI plant has been leaching out for a year now.
"I am horrified but not surprised," conceded KeShaun Pearson, the head of the Memphis Community Against Pollution, in an interview with Wired after the permit decision came down. "The flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act and the disregard for our human right to clean air, by xAI's burning of illegal methane turbines, has been stamped as permissible."
"Over 1,000 people submitted public comments demanding protection," he continued, "and got passed over for a billionaire’s ambitious experiment."
The new permit, as Wired notes, grants xAI the right to operate 15 turbines. According to <a href="https://www.selc.org/press-release/new-images-reveal-elon-musks-xai-datacenter-has-nearly-doubled-its-number-of-polluting-unpermitted-gas-turbines/">aerial footage</a> from the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/17/naacp-launches-lawsuit-pollution-musks-xai-00410597">planning to sue</a> the Musk-owned AI company for violating the Clean Air Act, there are <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musk-memphis-illegal-generators">as many as 35</a> on the site of the xAI data center — and with its track record of flagrant law-breaking, there's a good chance all will be turned on.
Between the SELC's suit and the permit's year-long expiration date, there is time for Musk's massively-polluting data center to be reined in — but until that happens, Memphians will keep being choked out in their own homes thanks to their government's decision to put one billionaire's profit margins over its own people.
More on xAI: <a href="https://futurism.com/grok-ai-white-genocide-tampered">Grok AI Went Off the Rails After Someone Tampered With Its Code, xAI Says</a>

Permission Granted

"I am horrified but not surprised."

Elon Musk Obtains Permit to Spew Pollution

Folks, it's official: the object that astronomers <a href="https://futurism.com/interstellar-object-detected-center-solar-system">recently spotted</a> blowing through the outer solar system came from interstellar space.
Yesterday, the intriguing stranger was named A11pl3Z. Now, it's earned the esteemed designation 3I/ATLAS — that "I" standing for "interstellar." 
3I/ATLAS is currently located between the orbits of the asteroid belt and Jupiter, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/science/interstellar-object-a11pi3z.html">New York Times reports</a>, where it's about 416 million miles away from the Sun, NASA <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-defense/2025/07/02/nasa-discovers-interstellar-comet-moving-through-solar-system/">said</a>. That's equal to four and a half times the distance between the Earth and our star.
But it's approaching fast. As we speak, 3I/ATLAS is hurtling toward the inner solar system at a speed of about 130,000 miles per hour — a "thousand times over the speed limit on a highway," Harvard's Avi Loeb <a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/welcoming-a-new-interstellar-object-a11pi3z-0b01f1cb4fbc">quipped</a>.
"This thing is traveling pretty fast," Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told the NYT.
"If you trace its orbit backward, it seems to be coming from the center of the galaxy, more or less," Chodas added. "It definitely came from another solar system. We don't know which one."
3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object to reach our Sun's domain — hence the "3." The first was '<a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/oumuamua-not-alien-gas">Oumuamua</a>, spotted in 2017, which became famed for its unusually elongated shape. The second, dubbed Borisov, was a comet that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/science/comet-borisov-break-up.html">spectacularly began to break apart</a>.
Provisionally, this latest visitor also appears to be a comet, making it the second known "rogue" comet in history. 
Its discovery and confirmation as an extrasolar visitor were a collaborative effort. What initially appeared to be an asteroid was first flagged Tuesday by a telescope in Chile that's part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center quickly added the intriguing object to its list of confirmed near-Earth objects. So did NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Soon, more than 100 observations from telescopes across the globe poured in, including "tentative reports of cometary activity," the Minor Planet Center said Wednesday, providing enough data to designate it 3I/ATLAS.
"There's no uncertainty" about its interstellar origins, Chodas told the NYT, because it's moving too fast to come from our own solar system.
We can only speculate how it got here. Per the NYT, it probably formed as a comet around another star, before a gravitational interaction, perhaps a <a href="https://futurism.com/passing-star-fling-earth">passing star</a>, booted it out of its home system.
How large 3I/ATLAS is is also a matter of some debate. If it were a rocky asteroid, the interstellar interloper would have to be about 12 miles wide to reflect the levels of light we're seeing, according to the NYT, which is what astronomers initially estimated.
But since it's a comet, it's much harder to say. Comets owe their luminous appearance to a halo of gas and dust known as a coma, which is released when the object is heated up by sunlight. These comas appear much larger than the solid object at their center, and their tails even more so; Borisov's was nearly 100,000 miles long, astronomers <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2019/11/26/new-image-offers-close-view-interstellar-comet">estimated</a>, or about 14 times the size of the Earth.
"You can't infer the size of the solid object from the brightness of the coma," Chodas told the NYT. "So it's too early to say how big this object is."
The good news is that there will be plenty of time to study 3I/ATLAS, which hasn't always been the case in our limited encounters with interstellar visitors; 'Oumuaua, for instance, vanished after just a few weeks. 
"It'll be easily observable for astronomers around the world," Chodas told the NYT. "It should be visible well into next year to large telescopes."
3I/ATLAS is expected to reach its closest approach to the Sun around October 30, NASA said, at a distance of about 130 million miles, putting it inside the orbit of Mars.
More on: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-moon-dust-lungs">Scientists Investigate What Happens If You Snort Moon Dust</a>